It was nice enough that we could sit on the patio. (Please excuse my dirty camera lens.)

I told the host and our server that it was Crockett’s birthday. He told me to stop. I said ‘not on your life’.

And then we got free cinnamon sugar doughnuts, proving pretty soundly that I was right and he was wrong.

Ha.

We ordered brunch drinks – a peach mimosa for me and a bloody maria for the birthday boy, and then got down to doughnut eating while we made our meal choices.

And while Crockett fielded birthday calls, left and right.

He’s apparently quite popular.

Here’s the thing about fried food. It may be guilt inducing, sometimes. It may be overkill, sometimes.

Sometimes, though? It’s perfect. These doughnuts were warm and crispy and every single bite was absolutely necessary.

Lola is a little tough for me – they have a lot of bell peppers in their hashes and stuff. I went with a safe choice.

Chicken and waffles.

Wait, did I say safe?

I meant delicious. It was a brined chicken breast with buttermilk waffles (I think), chorizo gravy, and a raspberry chipotle syrup. I made Crockett a bite right off, so that I wouldn’t eat it all before he got to try it.

For his own meal, Crockett went for the pulled pork benedict, served on chile cornmeal muffins.

It was tasty, but it was no chicken and waffles.

I also caved and ordered coffee. I’m trying to move away from coffee in restaurants, because I keep getting refills and then I feel a little jittery until mid-afternoon. Sure, I could just turn down the refills, but it’s better if I don’t have to put myself in that position. I’m not strong like that.

A chicken waffleicious bite, right there.

Lola is in a really great neighborhood of Denver, and they’re one of the locations where you can rent these bikes. You pay $6 for the day, and can take a bike from any location for up to half an hour for free. It’s kind of expensive, but we had some time to kill before our next stop, so we rented a couple and rode around the neighborhood, looking at adorable houses and new condos and dreaming of a slightly more urban life. When we brought the bikes back, we realized we still had some time to kill, so we checked them out again and rode over the highway into downtown Denver. We tooled around for half an hour, through the parks – it was a very effective way to rid ourselves of our brunch induced desire to nap.

It’s a good thing, because our big event for the day was pretty physical. Indoor skydiving!

(Those two people are not us.)

These two people are us.

Once we started the skydiving, I had to lock up all my stuff, so I don’t have any pictures. I do have a video, but in general it was like this – we laid on our stomachs in the wind and tried really hard to learn what some people make look easy.

We were pretty good, honestly.

Afterwards, we went to Crockett’s brothers house for dinner and delicious homemade Italian style cheesecake.